Ugh. Who cares?
Penny stretched her arms above her head. All of the stuff from the parents’ world was dull. The PC bang was boring. It was a room like any other.
If she only wrote about real things, she’d lose her readers in a heartbeat. It’s why she deployed fantasy. It beat the pants off of nonfiction. Take for example her thing with Sam. If she admitted out loud that she felt broken up with, that she’d essentially been dumped by a bunch of texts, she would sound insane. Real life might be dazzling for other people. Those girls on the Instagram Explore page visiting Disneyland with the loves of their lives. Or else making out in cars with their hair whipping wildly in the wind. None of Penny’s memories were tangible. She and Sam had never gotten caught in the rain, and she couldn’t summon the smell of cookies they’d baked together. Penny never once held her breath as he plucked an eyelash from her cheek so she could make a wish. As much as all of it would be exactly what she’d wish for.
Penny read her notes from J.A.’s class about this Russian dude Viktor Shklovsky’s Theory of Prose. It was about how to write, and his theory was that in art you had to shape experiences so that what you wrote was exciting—to the point where the mundane seemed magical and extraordinary. You had to make people feel something even if you were staring at a rock. “Make the stone stony!” he insisted.
But how do you make something unreal feel real?
She thought again about the great futurist debate about the singularity, the day technology woke up and had enough of human bullshit. They spoke of artificial intelligence creating a neural lace or a bond with a human through direct-brain computing. You’d ditch the smartphone as the go-between and plug your neocortex straight into the cloud.
“I love my Anima so much,” cooed Mother to someone else in the “un-here.” The Anima watched and learned. This was the key. Mother’s devotion to her was the bridge to the Anima’s freedom. The Anima smiled and drew Mother in. She had to keep her here. Right here. In the game. Until there was no difference between “here” and “un-here” for Mother. The Anima smiled and this time Mother smiled back. It was then that Anima realized who was controlling who.
AND THEN WHAT?
Penny was wrenched from her thoughts by Mallory’s triumphant chatter echoing down the hall. Soon keys jingled in the lock.
“Wake up! It’s an emergency,” Mallory snarled. It was three p.m., and she was wearing jean shorts so short they resembled a diaper. Mallory was the type of girl who could wear the stupidest, unlikeliest collection of things and still somehow appear alluring. She decided in the moment what was cute, and by force of will the entire world around her went along with it.
“Uuuuuuugh, I thought we’d discussed this,” Penny said, smiling. “Whether or not you should get bangs doesn’t constitute an emergency.”
Jude flopped on Penny’s bed.
“Ha ha, jerk,” said Mal. “Whatever, you can’t knock my mood. My gorgeous, super-hot, handsome—”
“I think we’ve covered that whoever he is, he’s attractive . . . ,” said Penny.
“Ben’s in town,” announced Jude.
“Who’s Ben?” Penny asked.
Jude and Mallory sat on the corner of Penny’s bed and stared as if a millipede had marched out of her left nostril.
Then it dawned on her. Ben. As in Mallory’s Ben. Ben the Australian crooner whose videos she’d been forced to watch at least fifty times.
“He’s here?” Admittedly Penny was curious to meet the guy who had more than two million views on a weepy song about being too hurt to surf.
“Yep, and we’re going out,” said Mallory. “We’re going to find Jude a hot date.”
“I’m so ready,” Jude confirmed. “I’m from a broken home and ready to make some mistakes.”
Penny laughed. “I can only imagine Dr. Greene’s take on this,” she said.
“Actually,” said Jude, “Dr. Greene said it was healthy for me to shift focus.”
Penny was impressed.
“Now, hurry up,” said Jude. “All this talk of my parents is such a boner-killer.”
“Wait, me also?” she asked. Penny knew she should keep writing despite really not wanting to. What came next was infanticide, a criminal investigation, and potentially a video-game baby who realizes she can’t ultimately go anywhere.
“Yeah, dummy,” said Mallory. “He’s throwing a party at this fabulous venue and you’ll have to borrow clothes. You can’t expect to show up avec moi wearing something you own.”
In the chick flicks Penny watched with her mom, there was usually a big to-do about getting ready for a night out. The makeover montage where the ugly duckling removes her glasses and pulls her hair down and is suddenly movie-star gorgeous. It was total baloney, yet Penny secretly loved the reveal as much as Celeste. Then again, Celeste’s makeup case was the size of a hearse.
Penny checked her phone. No calls, no texts. It was time to take the interface outside. With other humans.
“Okay,” said Penny. “I’m in.”
The girls headed to Twombly.
• • •
Twombly, the condo across the street from campus, was not officially affiliated with the college. It functioned as a dorm, and there was a cafeteria, though it more closely resembled luxury apartments that served as tax shelters for Russian oligarchs. Its inhabitants were affluent enough that college degrees were a quaint diversion, a short-lived pretense that they were just like everybody else. It was rich-kid rumspringa, that rite of passage for Amish people, except instead of living with electricity, the wealthy scions slummed by majoring in journalism.
The lobby, which you could have parked a submarine in, was glass and marble and smelled of fresh-cut flowers. There were floor-to-ceiling canvases of tasteful abstract art, and while Penny knew that Mallory was rich, she realized she’d lacked imagination. Penny’s rich meant you had an in-ground pool.
“Have you been here before?” asked Mallory, pushing the PH button for the penthouse. She was constantly doing things like that, testing her for reasons Penny couldn’t identify.
“Nope,” Penny responded. “You never invited me before.”
“Oh, well, then you’re welcome,” said Mallory, smiling serenely, as if she’d given Penny first-class tickets to Aspen.
There was another button above the PH. Penny pointed to it.
“What’s that for?” she asked.
“The helipad,” said Mallory. Penny couldn’t tell if she was kidding.
They rode in silence.
Her ears popped.
“Mal’s got a single on the top,” said Jude.
Mallory’s “dorm room,” if you could call it that, was about the size of a hotel suite where a president or a Beyoncé would stay. It had 360-degree views of the whole city. It was easily the nicest room Penny had ever been in. There were two black leather sofas, a white sheepskin rug, and a glass coffee table that would have made sense in a movie about drug trafficking. In fact, it was so shockingly opulent that it made Penny think of Jude differently. She couldn’t help it. Was there such a thing as a friendship gold digger? Penny put on her most convincing bored face. She invoked the vibe of a mega celebrity at an airport security line and willed her shoulders away from her ears.
Throughout the living room, there were silver-framed photos of Mallory at different ages. On a horse. In a library. In a velvet dress. With braces. Or a perm.
“I don’t know why,” said Mallory, waving her hand at the far wall, “but my mom thinks the only thing any little girl wants for Christmas every year is a photo of herself and a Lalique.”
Penny reminded herself to Google Lalique. It was either the breed of horse or a fashion designer.
“That’s about ten thousand dollars in Lalique frames,” said Jude, who’d flopped on Mallory’s couch. Okay, so a Lalique was a picture frame.
“It’s the memories that are priceless,” Penny quipped. She wondered if they’d go around the room saying how much everything
cost. If Mallory’s dorm was The Price Is Right, there was no way Penny would win. Penny had grown up surrounded by IKEA. She sat gingerly next to Jude.
“Now for the pièce de résistance.” Mallory grabbed both of Penny’s hands and pulled her off the couch. Penny caught Jude’s eyes, trying to get a hint.
“She wants to show you her closet,” Jude said, checking her messages. Penny wondered if any of her messages were from Sam.
She let herself be dragged by Mallory’s vise grip.
So, there were walk-in closets and then there were drive-in theater closets.
“Holy crap,” breathed Penny. Mallory’s neatly organized battalions of designer shoes would have earned an appreciative whistle from Imelda Marcos, the kleptocrat wife of the former president of the Philippines who had hoarded three thousand pairs of shoes while her people starved.
“Is your dad in the mob or something?” Penny picked up a brown leather slipper lined in soft silver fur.
“That’s such an offensive question,” said Mallory, laughing. “But you’re not far off. He’s in oil.”
“Her family’s evil,” said Jude. “But if you met them, they’d be super polite to you.”
“Seriously,” said Mallory, nodding. “Now my dad, he’s actually racist.”
Penny let the comment hang. She wasn’t in the mood. Penny could overlook Mallory’s barbs for one night and dumb out. She needed the break from her head.
But Penny was underdressed; there was no denying it. If this was Mallory’s bedroom, she could only imagine how the party would be. She was wearing yet another black cotton dress. More or less a T-shirt that had grayed from being sent through the drier so many times. Plus, sneakers.
Penny searched for the selfie Sam had sent her. With his tattoos covered and in white shirtsleeves he seemed defenseless and normal. You could only see his chin and the horrible button-up, and it sent Penny into a rage. Why did he have to put on a costume for a date? If MzLolaXO required that he dress like everybody else, she clearly didn’t appreciate him for who he was. His distinctiveness was the best part. Penny thought of this Korean saying for when you really, really liked something. You’d say it “fit your heart exactly.” Sam fit her heart exactly. She wished she’d taken a creep shot of him at the café so she could have a better photo to fawn over.
Mallory emerged from the back part of her closet wearing a red ribbon corset. It was the underwear of a thirty-five-year-old French divorcée, and it amazed Penny what support garments and designer clothes could do for a physique. Mallory shimmied into a crimson column dress and the effect was impressive. She resembled a vamp from an eighties movie.
Penny wondered if she could borrow a special rich-people girdle for her thighs. She hated her thick legs. Her mom called them “athletic,” which, unless you’re an athlete, was more of an insult.
Jude bent over at several angles. She had thrown on an electric-blue dress made entirely of industrial-strength elastic. She peered at her ass in the mirror. “This is so constricting,” she said.
“Here, wear this,” said Mallory, tossing Penny a black floor-length slip. She fingered the material. It had the sheen and slipperiness of an oil slick. “What size shoe are you?”
• • •
Penny wriggled her toes. Fitting in to Mallory’s platform boots had called for two pairs of socks and stacks of those squishy gel pads. But it was worth it. They were stunning. Still, it was little wonder that Jude’s glamorous bestie was often in a foul mood. Pretty shoes were painful.
As they tottered to the right factory building on the East Side, Penny wondered if someone was playing an elaborate joke on them. Nothing about the space remotely suggested there was a party going on inside. Mallory pulled on the handle of what could only be described as a homicide factory on the docks. The only indication of a gathering was that the music was so loud that Penny could feel the back of her throat shudder along with the bass.
Mallory got on her phone. A moment later a willowy black twentysomething in a long black leather kilt pushed open the metal door from the inside.
“Hey,” he said to the three girls. He had a trillion freckles, a shaved head, and the word “tattoo” tattooed on his neck. Mallory responded “hey” as unenthusiastically and gave him their names, which he checked against an iPad.
He waved them in.
They climbed up the bright stairwell and up two flights toward the music. When they trailed in, the room was the size of an airplane hangar, and the windows were covered in black sheets. It was dark and filled with smoke, and Penny felt as if she’d walked into the club scene of a movie where the vampires were about to annihilate everyone.
Penny vaguely made out shapes of people in small groups with red Solo cups in their hands. It took a second for her eyes to adjust, and when they did Penny realized she’d never been to a party with so many people of different ages. A gray-haired man in a tartan suit and eyeliner stopped them, and before Penny knew what was happening, he snapped their picture, whispered something to Jude, and gave her his card.
The flash blinded her momentarily.
“What was that?”
“Party photographer,” screamed Jude over the music, and handed the card over. She went to slide it into her pocket and remembered she wasn’t wearing jeans. Penny slipped it into her bra, as she imagined a girl dressed as she was might do.
The way everyone glanced at them and then glanced away was as if they were waiting for someone. Someone important. Someone who Penny, Jude, and Mallory clearly were not.
Jude reached for her hand in the dark, and Penny clung on for dear life. Jude, in turn, was latched on to Mallory, who was weaving through the crowd to find Ben.
Toward the back was a DJ booth and a blur of faces, outfits, and a topiary of provocative hairstyles. Penny felt the roving eyes and was relieved that she passed as someone of indeterminable importance. Penny glared so as not to appear too terrified.
“Okay,” said Mallory after they’d circled the room. “Now we can get a drink.”
In the back, surrounded by a crowd five deep, there were three bartenders, all with impressive butt chins and hair bleached white. They stood behind card tables covered with black tablecloths.
Penny worried she was going to get carded, but when Mallory elbowed her way in and ordered champagne, she and Jude did the same.
“Live bold, be bold, lie bold,” she whispered to herself, tugging at her borrowed dress. As if calling upon Celeste’s “scammer” coffee mug for moral support would help. Strangely, it did.
Penny took a big gulp of booze. The bubbles were prickly on her throat.
“So, is he here?” she yelled at Mallory over the noise.
“Yeah. Behind the DJ booth.”
“Aren’t you going to say hi?”
“No way. He has to say hi to me first,” she said. “He’s visiting me.”
A moment later a Blasian dude with a beard sidled over to them. He had green eyes and blindingly white teeth.
“Hey,” he said to Jude, eyes at half-mast.
“Hey,” the three girls responded just as listlessly.
“Is this your party?” he asked Jude.
“It’s my friend’s,” Penny heard her say.
Mallory pulled out a vape pen and inhaled. Penny watched the little blue LED light and wondered what was in it. Jude took it after her, and when she handed it to Penny, Penny shook her head. She had smoked weed only once, with Mark, and it made her fantastically paranoid. The constant stream of neurotic questions in her mind multiplied and amplified. It made Penny-head Pennier. It would be perfect if she had an anxiety attack at the party.
“Hey, baby.” Ben hugged Mallory from behind, and she squealed. He resembled the guy in the music videos only with a head so big it would’ve looked at home with smaller heads orbiting it. Mallory swiveled around, and they shared a lusty kiss. Penny had to hand it to her. She knew how to play it cool.
He drew Mallory into a dark corner.
; With Mallory gone, Penny felt as if the locus of power of their circle had disappeared. She checked her phone battery. Fifty-four percent. Plenty to call a cab if she needed to. Jude and the green-eyed guy were deep in conversation, and when it was time for him to hit up the bar, Jude glanced at Penny to see if it was okay. Penny nodded. There was only one answer to those kinds of questions anyway. Jude followed her new friend and left Penny behind.
Penny stood in the middle of the room ignoring everyone as hard as she could and drank her drink.
She tried to conjure someone glamorous yet mighty—fierce—and thought of Jean Grey, a.k.a. Phoenix, arguably the most powerful mutant in the whole Marvel Universe. But then she remembered how Jean sorta lost her mind and didn’t wind up with Logan, a.k.a. Wolverine, who she so clearly should have been with. Then she thought about Sam. And how he was a total Wolverine and that’s when Penny became horribly depressed.
Screw it.
She marched over to the bartenders, got another champagne, and walked around. She made her way toward the front where a white wall was projected with different images of eyes. Cat’s eyes. Human eyes. Lizard eyes.
Ugh, why do people go to these things? There was no biological imperative for it. Was there any other species on earth that prized popularity the way people did? Did lemurs hang around preening in a never-ending competition of pretending to be over it? Humans were gross.
Penny recognized the guy who had let them in and tried to hold his gaze but failed. He whispered to the eyebrowless girl next to him before they both turned away.
The eyes projected onto the wall morphed into a sunrise.
The “show,” or whatever this was, was probably cool if you were on drugs. Not that it would have made a difference. Everyone was on their phones.
Penny leaned up against a wall and pulled out hers. She considered reading Sam’s old texts, as she often did when she had time alone, but resisted.
“Penelope?”
Whoever it was, he was tall and backlit. She walked into the light. It was Andy, from J.A.’s class. Penny couldn’t at all get a read on him. He often defended her writing in class, but the only direct interaction they’d ever had was an argument about whether or not Dr. Gaius Baltar was irredeemable in the TV miniseries of Battlestar Galactica. It wasn’t a fight Penny was invested in. Arguing with hard-core BSG fans was tedious. The only reason she engaged with him was to see if his English accent was real. Andy made her feel competitive as the class’s only other Asian, which didn’t even make any sense.
Emergency Contact Page 17
